1/5/2017 – Reorganization

I spent some time today rearranging my room and putting up anime posters/scrolls that I’ve had sitting in the open spaces of my room for maybe 2 years.

It’s been a while since I’ve been so motivated to do something as extravagant as a makeover for my own walls. A few days before, while putting away the picture frames that used to hang on those walls, I had also finished reorganizing and cleaning the rest of my room in one sweep. I vacuumed, I packed up unused things, I reorganized the stuff under my bed, I cleaned a dusted all of my shelves, and even replaced the lightbulb on my lamp. That day, as well as this day, was to be considered very productive, at least by my meager standards.

Cleaning and reorganizing my room is not a common occurrence for me. Most of the time, my laundry ends up on the floor, unfolded and wrinkled, and I would just pull out the clothes I needed straight from the floor, even though I had a perfectly functional dresser right in front of me that could fit all of my clothes. I get too comfortable with my space, it seems, and just do what appears to be convenient and quick. Of course, logically having an organized procedure is a lot more efficient in the long run, but in terms of how my personal space works I couldn’t care less.

So what happens when I’m motivated enough to clean my room? Well, most of the time it’s used as a distraction, a stress reliever, for whatever I’m actually supposed to be doing. Homework would be one thing. An important paper or project would be another. Something school related, definitely. Past me would never be motivated to do something like this on holiday, as I did today and a few days ago, because the pressure of high expectations didn’t really exist as a motivator during those periods.

I used to pride myself in that. If I was under pressure, I would get things done. In university, all-nighters were often a self-imposed and unnecessary challenge because A.) I am a chronic procrastinator and B.) I am a chronic perfectionist. If you understand what it means to be both of those things at the same time, then you may also understand the amount of unnecessary suffering this has caused me over many, many years of public schooling. I didn’t enjoy the fact that I could squeeze weeks worth of effort into one night. My problem was that I was capable of doing it, and I was able to get away with it.

These days I attribute my fickleness in commitment to being very, very easy to distract. Such distraction would be a common occurrence unless specifically motivated by and focused on one task, as observed and explained by my absence seizures. I’m not talking about the kind of distracted behavior that, say, a person with ADHD would exhibit. I’m more of, say, a daydreamer. An involuntary daydreamer. A 23-year-old adult male who still daydreams and doesn’t know that he’s daydreaming until prodded by his surroundings. I’m still a kid, is what I’m trying to say, one that doesn’t clean his room consistently and doesn’t fold their laundry and leaves a mess in his room for god knows how many months before he finally bothers to do something about it.

I think it’s apparent at this point that I’ve been reiterating my circumstances for quite some time now, with the whole depression and seizure and not being able to drive schtick that you may or may not be tired of reading by now. But I think it helps to be reiterative about it, or at least being able to write it out in as many ways as I possibly can. Because whenever I do, I describe myself in ways I would normally consider to be outrageous. You wouldn’t know any of this was going on in my head had I not written anything about it, and it astounds me that, well, I think this much.

I think that’s really what’s driving me to do this journal, if I may call it a journal. It’s a reminder for me that, yes, indeed, I am thinking. I am aware of what’s going on right now. The lapses in my awareness are in fact not happening right now, thanks to the medication. Or, at least, I think that’s what’s happening. I was able to clean my room on holiday, after all.

Addendum

As the new season begins, I’ll start to talk a bit more about anime as the journal entries continue to roll in. I did not watch today’s episodes because I heard mixed/bad things about them and I’m not about to watch something I am for sure not going to like. At least, not yet. There’s always going to be more Sword Art Online to trash in its place.